WORLD WAR 2 ,EIGHTIES,MUSIC, WWII Heroes,HISTORY,HOLOCAUST

Category Archives: Survivor

I don’t know how often I have watched this movie but it is one of my favourite war movies.It is funny though that you never really know anything about the real lives of actors or actresses. You may know something about the big stars in movies, but when it comes to the people who play the smaller parts, you just know nothing about them.

Ingrid Pitt (born Ingoushka Petrov) survived World War II and became a well-known actress on the East Berlin stage, however, she did not appear on screen until well into her twenties.

Ingoushka Petrov was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a German father of Russian descent and a Polish Jewish mother.During World War II, she and her family were imprisoned in Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Free City of Danzignow present-day Nowy Dwór Gdański County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland.

She survived, and in Berlin, in the 1950s, married American soldier, Laud Roland Pitt Jr. and moved to California. After her marriage failed, she returned to Europe, but after a small role in a film, she took the shortened, stage name, “Ingrid Pitt” and headed to Hollywood, where she worked as a waitress while trying to make a career in films.

In the early 1960s, Pitt was a member of the prestigious Berliner Ensemble, under the guidance of Bertolt Brecht’s widow Helene Weigel. In 1965, she made her film debut in Doctor Zhivago, playing a minor role. In 1968, she co-starred in the low-budget science-fiction film The Omegans, and in the same year, played British spy, Heidi Schmidt in Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.

But she was best known as Hammer Films’ most seductive female vampire ,Countess Dracula, of the early 1970s, the Polish-born Pitt possessed dark, alluring features and a sexy figure that made her just right for Gothic horror.

She also played in “The Wicker Man” and several episodes of “Dr Who”But I will always remember her as Heidi Schmidt in “Where Eagles Dare”

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Captain Roy Wooldridge, who was in the Royal Engineers, was taken prisoner during a covert night-time mission to examine submerged mines along the French beaches weeks before the D-Day landings.

Mr Wooldridge, who was twice awarded the Military Cross, was sent a telegram ordering him to report to his unit just three days after his wedding in 1944.

The lieutenant, who was later promoted to captain, was sent to the French beaches with a colleague to ensure there were no mines which could blow up the boats during the D-Day landings.

Due to the secretive nature of the mission, he was not wearing a uniform or carrying identification

Captured by the Nazis and treated as a spy, Captain Roy Wooldridge was told he must reveal all about his secret mission or be shot dead.Despite being grilled by the Gestapo, the British soldier refused to talk .

Capt Wooldridge, a hero of the Battle of El Alamein two years earlier at which Rommel was defeated by the Allies, was stunned when he was presented to the high-ranking officer.

When Rommel asked if he needed anything, cheeky Roy replied: “A single ticket back to the UK, a pint of beer, a packet of cigarettes and a really good meal.”

To his astonishment, his wish was granted when he was ushered into Rommel’s mess where all three items were waiting for him, with the exception of the ticket back to the UK.

He later recalled “I was taken to the officers’ mess, where a waiter in white dress adorned with a ­swastika gave me a jug of beer, a packet of cigarettes and a meal.

From memory it was meatballs, or faggots, with potatoes and sauerkraut.”

Capt Wooldridge ate the food, drank the stein of lager and smoked the German cigarettes, but kept the empty packet as a souvenir.

That empty cigarette packet featured on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow on 23 November 2014.With Arms and Militaria specialist Graham Lay

Thanks to Rommel, he survived and was sent on to a prisoner of war camp, where he spent the rest of the war.

Captain Roy Wooldridge died in April 2017, aged 97.

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I am passionate about my site and I know a you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks

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Mary Berg lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, but her situation was very unusual. Though she was born in Poland, her mother was an American, so her ultimate fate was different from most of her neighbors. Jews with American citizenship could possibly be exchanged for German prisoners of war, so they had a unique value to their captors. While 300,000 of her fellow Jews were deported to their deaths, she and her family were held in Pawiak Prison, pending the transfer that would eventually bring them to the U.S.

From a window, she could see the columns of people heading down the street to the trains that would take them to Treblinka. She later wrote, “We, who have been rescued from the ghetto, are ashamed to look at each other. Had we the right to save ourselves? Here everything smells of sun and flowers and there—there is only blood, the blood of my own people.”

Mary lived in the Warsaw Ghetto for almost two years. Although she came from a wealthy, privileged family, she was a sensitive observer who recorded the terrible ordeal of life in the ghetto with true feeling for her fellow sufferers, especially for those who were less fortunate.

This took a psychological toll on her, even invading her dreams. On July 10th, 1941 she wrote, “I am full of dire forebodings. During the last few nights, I have had terrible nightmares. I saw Warsaw drowning in blood; together with my sisters and my parents, I walked over prostrate corpses. I wanted to flee, but could not, and awoke in a cold sweat, terrified and exhausted. The golden sun and the blue sky only irritate my shaken nerves.”

In January 1943, her family was sent to an internment camp in France, where they awaited a prisoner exchange that would allow them to flee. Their journey to freedom began March 1, 1944, when they boarded a train for Lisbon. There, they boarded the ocean liner SS Gripsholm for the voyage to America. Her memoir, Warsaw Ghetto, describes her years in Pawiak.She arrived in the United States in March 1944, at the age of 19. Her memoir was serialized in American newspapers in 1944, making it one of the earliest accounts of the Holocaust to be written in English, Published under the penname “Mary Berg”

Mary was not guilty for wanting to live, but she undoubtedly felt compromised by the struggle to survive. Freedom did not entirely lift this burden, but she believed that her ghetto diary/memoir might do some good for others. When she arrived in the U.S. in 1944, some of Europe’s Jews were still alive. Saving them might be possible, but only if their plight was publicized. This was her motivation for helping to get her account published. In the end, she became uncomfortable with the celebrity that accompanied her book, and she dropped out of public view.

In 1944, a little Jewish girl named Elianne Muller wore this dress made of parachute material – dyed orange – during the Liberation celebration that took place in the village of Neerkant in the Dutch province of Brabant. It went beautifully with her reddish curls. The family Tijssen, Peter and Maria Tijssen had 11 children, who had been hiding the girl, made her this dress for this festive occasion.

Earlier in the war Elianne spent time in three other hiding places, separated from her parents. Though her father Hein and her mother Rebecca miraculously survived, they completely lost track of their daughter. In 1945 her father placed an appeal in various newspapers describing his daughter’s striking hair colour. The plea was successful: Elianne and her parents were reunited. It was an exception for an entire Jewish family to survive the war.

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Rolf Abrahamsohn was not only a witness to the Holocaust he was also witness to the remorselessness of some of his fellow country men.

One day a few months after the war Rolf encountered a man who was hitchhiking. Rolf felt sorry for the man because he only had one leg, so he decided to give him a lift.

After a few minutes the conversation turned to the Kristall nacht. The hitchhiker told Rolf that one night he was at a party he was told “come and meet us at the Loestraße tomorrow, you will see some action there” He said he did go there and walked into the Abrahamsohn’s textile shop,it had been burning already, but the place was filthy” At that stage Rolf stopped the car and kindly asked the man to leave the vehicle, when the hitchhiker got our Rolf said” I wish they had blown away your other leg too, our place wasn’t filthy”

The shop the man had been referring to was Rolf’s parents shop.

I mentioned fellow country men because Rolf was a German. Although the Abrahamsohn’s were Jewish they did celebrate Christmas like any other German, singing the same carols and hymns. They even sent their sons to an evangelical christian school.Rolf’s dad had fought for the German army during WWI, with the slogan “All Jews are proud to be German”

Ludwig was born before Rolf, he died in an accident aged 3.Below is a picture of Rolf and his other 2 brothers.

Although they were Jewish the boys attended the evangelische Goetheschule in Marl.However due to increased antisemitism they left the school in 1934.

Arthur was beaten half to death during the Kristallnacht in November 1938. The shop had been damaged by fire,after that the family moved into a “Jew House” in Reckinghause. Shortly afterwards the Father and the older son Hans were arrested. When they were released again Arthur and Hans fled to Belgium.

Aged 14 Rolf was forced to do slave labour for companies in the Ruhr region one of the companies was Ruhrgas AG(Currently E-ON Ruhrgas)

In 1940 his youngest brother Norbert died of Diphtheria aged 7. In January 1942 Rolf and his Mother were deported to Riga where he survived the ghetto.

Later they were sent to the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Riga. Unfortunately his Mother did not survive due to the appalling living conditions.

Rolf then was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig.

Subsequently he was then send to a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp where he was put to work in the armament production and clearing of bombs. The last few weeks of the war he spent in Theresienstadt where he eventually was liberated by Soviet troops.

Hoping to be re-united with some of his relatives he found out that his Father and Brother had both been killed after they had been deported from Belgium.

After the war he decided to re-open his Parents’ shop.

He has since become a successful business man and since the 80’s he has been involved in re-establishing a Jewish community in the Recklingshausen-Bochum area together with other survivors.

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I was actually doing research on a Sobibor victim called Ben Ali Libi which was the stage name of Michel Velleman , a Dutch Jewis magician who died in Sobibor on July 2nd 1943, But although there is a lot of mention of Ben Ali Libi there is actually little information. However I will do a piece on him in the near future. One name that did come up a lot during my research was the name of Jules Schelvis, I believe the last Dutch Jewish survivor of Sobibor.He died last month on April 3.

Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch historian, writer, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. He lost his wife and most of his family during The Holocaust. Schelvis was a plaintiff and expert witness during the trial of John Demjanjuk.

Jules was the second child of Jewish parents. His parents were not religious instead they devoted their lives as humanists and members of the Social Democratic Labor Party (SDAP). Some of their Jewish traditions were kept in the family in a natural way. Later in his life Jules still had warm thoughts when remembering ‘kesause mangelen‘ (unshelling peanuts from the Island of Curacao) at the dinner table on a Friday night. The sweet pastry from the Jewish bakery. He remembered his youth as happy, warm and educational. Despite the difficult financial circumstances of the thirties there was always food and an interest in culture and science.

After high school Jules was able to get an education to become a printer. He was grateful to his parents, who made this happen, for the rest of his life. Jules graduated in 1939, at the Printing Office Lindenbaum in Amsterdam. At this Office Jules made a quick career. However due to an anti Jewish measure, Jules was fired from the Lindenbaum Office during the war. He returned working for the Lindenbaum Office after war. He realized this only with the help of a legal decision. Not much later Jules switched to the newspaper ‘Het Vrije Volk.’ After the merge with the newspaper ‘Het Algemeen Handelsblad’ in Rotterdam, Jules achieved the position of manager of the technical division of the newspaper.

In the spring of 1940 Jules met with the seventeen year old Rachel Borzykowski through the youth labor organization ‘Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale (AJC). Due to the existing anti-semitism Rachel’s parents fled Poland shortly after the First World War. Jules was welcomed in the Borzykowski family with great enthusiasm and warmth.

Jules Schelvis was put on transport from Westerbork on 1 June 1943 with his wife and in-laws. He brought his guitar as a ‘welcome distraction to take our mind off things’.

On arrival in Sobibor he managed at the last moment to join a group of men who were selected for labour in the peat camp of Dorohucza.After he’d arrived he addressed one of the SS guards as officer in German, because he didn’t know the SS ranking.It may have played on the vanity of this guard because he asked Jules of he actually knew German. Jules replied “Jawohl offizier” (yes officer). The guard then told him to join the men who were going to the peat camp. In an interview he gave last year he stated that this bit of knowledge of the German language had been the difference between life and death

Jules Schelvis was one of the eighteen Dutch Jews who survived Sobibor.

On 26 May 1943 there was a raid in the city centre of Amsterdam in which more than 3,000 Jews were rounded up. Among them was 22 year old typographer Jules Schelvis, his wife Chel and her family. The couple had considered going into hiding, but had dreaded the problems this would present. Like so many others they expected to be put to work in German camps and they had decided to let themselves be rounded up. ‘Very calmly,’ wrote Schelvis after the war ‘we got our rucksacks and haversacks, that had been long ready just in case.’ By tram they were taken to a site near Muiderpoort train station, and from there, after hours of waiting, transported on a special train to Westerbork on June 1st. After six days they left the barracks with bag and baggage and were put on a train to Sobibor.

After four days the victims arrived at the camp. The reception did not bode well. They were beaten out of the carriages by men with truncheons and whips. ‘I remember very well’, said Schelvis, ‘how my father-in-law was struck very hard across his back with a whip’. The prisoners had to walk towards a large barracks and throw all the haversacks and rucksacks, coats and overcoats on big heaps. ‘Before I knew it the women were separated from the men. I didn’t even have a chance to kiss Chel and we weren’t allowed to look back’. Schelvis never saw his wife again.

“emaciated people with death in their shoes passed us”
From among the men a group of eighty young men were selected for, so it seemed, the Jewish camp police and Schelvis managed to get included in the group. As it turned out the men were chosen to work in a nearby camp. An SS-officer told them they could return to their family and friends in Sobibor every night, to eat and relax. Those who stayed behind in the camp, so they were told, would first bathe. Separately of course, as that is why the men and women had been kept apart. Later, when Schelvis was put to work in Radom, he was told exactly what had happened to those who stayed behind. After the men and women had undressed, they were led to special chambers where they were gassed. After that their corpses were checked for gold teeth; these were knocked from their mouths by members of a Jewish Arbeitskommando. After that the corpses were dragged to the crematorium and burned.

A view of the Sobibor train station in Poland December 1, 2009. John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old former U.S. autoworker, was wheeled into a packed Munich court on Monday to face charges he helped kill 27,900 Jews during the Holocaust in what is likely to be Germany’s last major Nazi-era war crimes trial. German state prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk of assisting in killings at the Sobibor death camp in Poland, where prosecutors say at least 250,000 Jews were killed. REUTERS/Peter Andrews (POLAND CRIME LAW CONFLICT) – RTXRBI6

Schelvis and the other young men were moved to labour camp Dorohucza, a peat camp where conditions were abominable. Prisoners slept in a draughty barracks, on the floor, no blanket. The Poles and Dutchmen who had been here longer were covered in lice. As there was no place to wash, the prisoners washed themselves in the creek in the morning. The work consisted of cutting peat. In the afternoon everyone received one litre of soup, made of sauerkraut, rotten apples and sometimes dog meat. ‘When we return to the barracks in the afternoon and at night, we are always beaten a lot by the Ukrainians. We are never quick enough and allegedly not disciplined. When you receive a beating like that, usually a series of blows, you’re not very happy, and you continue to feel it for days’, says Schelvis. He also witnessed the execution of two Dutchmen who had tried to escape. Together with another Dutch printer Schelvis applied for work in a print-shop outside the camp. But he and the group of men he was part of ultimately ended up in Lublin-Flugplatz, a labour camp a stone’s throw from the concentration and death camp of Lublin-Majdanek. There was no trace of a print-shop, but Schelvis did see men lugging heavy tree-trunks: ‘Emaciated people with death in their shoes passed us, spurred on by SS and Ukrainians with whips and sticks.’ Schelvis and the others from Dorohucza, including the Dutchman Jozef Wins, were forced to build barracks in the camp, among other things.

After several days Schelvis and the other typographers were taken to Radom, west of Lublin. Radom was an actual Jewish ghetto, where part of the population worked as tailors. Conditions were good and Schelvis rarely saw any SS in the ghetto. Here were the printing presses and a typesetting machine that had survived the ghetto uprising in Warsaw intact. The machines had been disassembled and transported to Radom where Schelvis and the other printers first had to reassemble them. The relative calm in the ghetto was shattered on 8 November 1943, when the SS, the Grüne Polizei, and their Ukrainian helpers carried out a raid in the ghetto. Schelvis, who together with the other typographers was among those who were spared, saw it happen: ‘The sick who couldn’t walk were shot’. Children and old people were murdered also, while the others were taken away to the nearby Szkolna concentration camp to, as would Schelvis eventually, work in the weapons factory.

When the Red Army advanced in the summer of 1944, the camp leaders were struck by indecision.‘There was huge panic among the German leadership,’ Schelvis stated in 1947, ‘SS on the run from the front passed us and they didn’t know what to do, surrender or flee.’ The order of the Sicherheitsdienst to kill all Jews when the Russians approached, was ignored by the camp command. The prisoners were told to prepare to walk to Tomaszow-Mazowiecki, over one hundred kilometres to the west, where they arrived after four days of walking. Here they were locked up in a rayon factory and they survived on potato peel broth; they did not work. A short time later the prisoners were put on a train to Auschwitz, where a selection took place on the platform. Some women, who were sent to the ‘good’ side, stayed behind to work in the camp, while the men who had a lucky escape – Schelvis among them – were loaded back onto the train. Further west they went, and the train finally arrived in Vaihingen near Stuttgart, where Schelvis was liberated by the French army on 8 April 1945.

On April 2016 Jules Schelvis died at age 95 in his residence Amstelveen.

It gives me hope and comfort knowing that Jules lived a long life after the horrors he had witnessed and had live through. Until recently I felt it was only evil people who lived a long life, if you look at the war criminals who escaped or hadn’t been executed,most of them reached 90+